Valve
Tried to Trick Half Life 2 Hacker Into Fake Job Interview on Wired.com
offers in interesting tale of intrigue stemming from the theft and
subsequent leak of the Half-Life 2 source code in 2003. One story of
an FBI raid in San Francisco surfaced shortly after that, but the
new Wired story details efforts at tracking down Axel "Ago" Gembe, a German
hacker who admitted responsibility for the data breach. A sting operation was
hatched to convince Gembe he was on track to be hired by Valve, and the FBI
attempted to lure him from German into the US for arrest under the guise of a
job interview. Gembe ultimately did not fall for the sting, but he was charged
in Germany for the crime, and was sentenced to probation. His legal status is
still uncertain, however, as he has been indicted by federal prosecutors in Los
Angeles in association with a distributed denial-Of-service attack by a
satellite TV provider, as Gembe is alleged to have created and supplied the
Agobot malware used in the attacks. Thanks nin.